State of the Art: Reloaded

I've reshuffled my State of the Art after some more reading.

These are the most relevant to my work:

• The Art of Computer Game Design - Chris Crawford
• Low Level Game Design - Ben Cousins
• Game Programming Patterns & Idioms - Chris Hecker & Zack Booth Simpson
• Game Design Patterns - Bernd Kreimeier et al
• The Designer’s Notebook - Ernest Adams
• Will Wright and Sid Meier

These are somewhat relevant but either redundant due to the above or here only because they're often referenced by others (which I suppose doesn't lend any credibility per se, but let's just go with mob-rule for now):

• I Have No Words & I Must Design - Greg Costikyan (extends Crawford)
  
• A Grammar of Gameplay - Raph Koster (attempts to extend Cousins?)
  
• MDA: Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics - Marc LeBlanc (oft-mentioned)
  
• FADTs: Formal Abstract Design Tools - Doug Church (like patterns but not)
  
• The 400 Project - Hal Barwood & Noah Falstein (like patterns but really not)
  

I promoted Kreimeier's Game Design Patterns and demoted Koster's Grammar of Gameplay. The reasons are that Kreimeier's work, while a bit too abstract, is at least somewhat more formal than the "Formal" Abstract Design Tools or the 400 Project, and serves as a good contrast to Simpson's Game Programming Patterns. I'm trying to fit somewhere between Kreimeier and Simpson with regard to abstraction and application of design patterns. Koster's work is good, but it basically repeats Cousins' idea of atoms and breaking down gameplay to base elements or moves, and his notation is a bit unweildy. Notation for concepts such as state transitions and other things Koster mentions already exists, however he has attempted to invent a new kind of diagram. Adapting existing graphical notations to the domain of games might have been less bold and less prone to failure, as Koster concedes his attempt was unsuccessful.

Anyway that's that.